


the quiet things that no one ever knows

by pendules



Category: Football RPF, Sports RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-25
Updated: 2011-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 17:48:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/215441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>People don't speak of death in such cases (when they love), people don't speak of defeat (when they have faith—and when it will break them), and so too they do not speak of this. He does not tell the truth but he does not lie either.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	the quiet things that no one ever knows

Sheva sits in a coffee shop in Milan, waits for Kakà, and wonders how love can be so simple sometimes. When it's taken out of the context, of course. When it is reduced from people with names and faces (faces that are on billboards and magazine covers, faces the world know) to consciousness, to interacting souls. When the bodies that have become familiar to the other's touch, the mouths that know the feel of the other and shape around comfortable words or comfortable silences are forgotten and the place where the hearts are joined is examined. It all starts there. Something that is not visible to the eye or tangible to the touch.

He wonders who fell in love with the other first, and if such a thing was even possible. Wonders if the only way you could fall in love, like this, was with someone falling right along with you.

Ricky, he knows, does this easily. It's easy to love when the world loves you. It's easy to give when you have and always had everything you could ever want. It's when you don't that it's harder. Sheva, he's always mistrusted the world's love for him. Surely, it must be a deception. Seduction, he's always thought, is one of the most powerful forces that exists, the greatest and most dangerous. Greater than hate, greater than destruction. Seduction is untruthful, and the world is the great manipulator.

Sheva used to be cautious, untrusting, but somehow, it's impossible to not trust Ricky.

Sheva, though he will never admit it, thinks he fell first.

 

He wishes, now, he would have trusted him a little more. Trusted the things that he loves, trusted them to love him in the same way.

Ricky doesn't love him in the same way Sheva loves Ricky. Ricky loves him for the beauty inside; Sheva loves him for everything, and sometimes, that is dangerous. It could have, would have, been the destruction of Kakà, and not Sheva (he knows how to protect himself).

But Ricky is, and he's always known this, stronger than he will ever be.

 

They speak on the phone every week for two years, and Sheva knows, he knows that if Ricky had ever asked him to come back, once, only once, he would've fled long before.

Instead, he speaks to him like a lover who's been left behind (but never _left_ ), but only for a while. Speaks to him like he's gone to war (and maybe he has), like it wasn't his choice, like he can't choose to come back. Like he won't come back, like this is their lives from now on. People don't speak of death in such cases (when they love), people don't speak of defeat (when they have faith—and when it will break them), and so too they do not speak of this. He does not tell the truth but he does not lie either.

He says, "I miss you." He says, "I stood on the balcony tonight with a glass of your favourite wine and pretended you were here with me." He says, "Remember the time you tried to convince me that you acted in soap-operas before you became a footballer?" ("Yes, and you said, _With a face like that? Were the casting directors blind?_ ") He doesn't say, _I miss you, il mio Andriy. Come back home to me._

He almost slips after Athens, but he holds his breath, takes the careful road like he's done for a year, like they never did before.

 

The last phone call they have is not the only one they'll remember (they'll remember them all, because there are pieces of each other left to find between the breathing and the echoes and the voice tinged with heartbreak at the beginning and the click at the end like something incomplete).

"Have you been honest with me?"

"Sheva, what do you mean?" He sounds slightly panicked.

"I...don't want to frighten you. It's the last thing I want after...after all this." He does not want to upset him, after so long, after so long of avoidance, of avoiding pain and avoiding truth; he also doesn't want to upset himself.

Ricky is everything he expects, everything he loves, and he knows it's all over now.

"I told you the truth. After you say, I love you, you cannot lie."

"But what about before?"

"Sheva," he starts. "Sheva. There was no before."

"But. But after. When I left you. I want you to say what we've both wanted since then; I want you to be honest with me again so I can do the same."

"Sheva..."

The line goes silent. Sheva lets a single tear rest on his cheek, makes sure he's aware of it there.

"Sheva, I want you to come home."

"Okay. Okay."

 

Kakà arrives five minutes and ten sips later.

"Sorry I'm late." He leans down to kiss his cheek, does so swiftly, but lingers to whisper in his ear.

"I saw you parallel parked. Amazing there wasn't an accident."

He takes his seat, and pulls a mock-suspicious face. "Or maybe there was. Are you hiding something from me?"

"Have you been honest with me?" Andriy teases.

"I've done more than that. I've forgiven you." Kakà takes Sheva's hand in his under the table, rests both on his thigh. Sheva smiles, makes sure he's aware of it there: his smile, his hand, Ricky sitting right there next to him, he _here_ with him. He realises then, that you can't truly love someone if they are not willing to accept it. And it's an amazing, strange thing when they do, and when they reciprocate. But the most amazing thing is that it happens every single day, to the most unlikely of people, in the most unlikely of places. Sheva, he wants nothing more than this, and he will have it; he knows he will now.

"But," he continues, "I need you to forgive yourself. Otherwise, it doesn't work. You have to be honest with yourself first."

"That's easy now," he says. "That's easy."


End file.
